Late "Weekend news" Roundup

WADAwatch readers may already have caught these stories, that have appeared since last Saturday or so...


Testers get head start on cheats (29 Oct. 2007)

Two new, experimental drugs that help build powerful muscles have already been added to the 2008 World Anti-Doping Agency banned list. But, significantly, the testers have worked alongside the scientists developing the new drugs, which could help cancer sufferers and people with muscular dystrophy, to also develop a detection method.

WADAwatch wants to emphasize wholeheartedly, that this form of development of new pharmaceutical preparations is the right way to procede in determining how to detect a substance prior to its release in the legitimate medical markets.


Cycling Union Takes Leap in Fight Against Doping (24 Oct. 2007)

Hysteria sells, absolute hysteria sells absolutely: an article from the New York Times on cycling, offers us a look at how the UCI is preventing a Mad-Max'ian end to the world of cycling:

After a wave of doping scandals so grave and widespread they threatened to crush the sport of cycling, the International Cycling Union has agreed to let a laboratory create biological records of its top riders in yet another effort to catch cheats. that

WADAwatch would like to inform Ms Juliet Macur that a bias against cycling in the media, which has persistently refused to investigate the standard performances of the laboratory that 'gave us' all these superlatively banale 'crises', in cycling, is more the culpret - as much as the writing of her many colleagues without sources beyond 'L'Equipe' - and welcomes the opportunity to provide her with one or two dynamic sources.

In fact, it would be nice to have encountered Ms Macur at the Icelandic conference 'Play the Game', billed as:

"the fifth world communication conference on sport and society"

Which leads us to this article at Playthegame.com: (29 Oct. 2007)

220 people gather in Reykjavik to discuss ways to end corruption in sport

No one knows the exact extent of corruption in sport, but experts estimate that we only hear about five per cent of all cases – the rest is hidden. Today, Play the Game welcomed 220 delegates to the fifth world communication conference on sport and society in Reykjavik and one of the key objectives is to throw light into some of the darker corners of sports governance.

Given that WADA's published statistics for 2006 show that in all international testing of cycling, at the 'Olympic and non-Olympic' levels, shows a universal rate of 4.17 per cent of tests being positive, this indicates that this author's 'experts' believe that 20 times, or nearly 82 % of cyclists are cheating the system.

That boggles the mind, if it means in fact that the TRUE TESTING capabilities found in WADA's accredited laboratories are so below standards, that tehy are failing to find 95 per cent of the 'positive doping cases' as the sponsors of 'Play the Game' would lead us to believe?


WADAwatch hesitated before publishing this next article, but has done so to force the discussion of the issue within a Bloomberg piece, namely: should journalists broadcast the means to cheat against a drug-test?

Athletes Fool Test of Banned Drug by Using Soap, Scientist Says (Oct. 29, 2007)

A few grains of household soap powder can destroy the banned drug EPO in an athlete's urine sample, wrecking a test that cost $2 million to develop, said Mario Thevis, an anti-doping researcher in Cologne, Germany.

Scientists made the discovery after a former Tour de France cyclist said he was given an unidentified powder to sabotage surprise tests, said Thevis, who works at the World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited biochemistry unit of German Sports University.

This clearly provides some leads to information that could be of benefit to any athlete that 'risks' being discovered because of his or her doping problem. However, overcoming the argument not to publish is the evidence of the ongoing difficulty in fighting doping in sport... which, it must be emphasized, is absolutely the pure motivation for WADAwatch to have become what it is.

As long as the testing and results-management are legitimate, reproducible and consistant around the world, WADAwatch is the strongest trumpet for clean sport.


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